Year of Intention: Do it now or later

One of the biggest struggles in my life and frankly a catalyst for this year's theme, is that I tend to delay non-gratifying projects. A prime example of this is our current method of laundry completion. It looks something like this: 

1) Let the laundry pile up for several days until we start to run out of things to wear.
2) Line up several laundry baskets and begin washing and drying one after another. 
3) Put clean and dry laundry into baskets.
4) Place baskets in random places throughout our living space.
5) Dig through baskets for several days to find what preferred clothing and wear it wrinkly.
6) When baskets are nearly empty, bring them to bedrooms, toss onto dresser top, and gather the next succession of dirty laundry waiting to be washed.

Now, for those with their laundry routine under control, I'm sure you're asking why in the world one would want to do laundry like that. The clothes is always wrinkled, always in view, and never in a home of its own like a closet or drawer. It is frustrating, to be sure, to have to hunt through several rooms of the house to find the cardigan I had intended to wear each morning. Was it in the clean pile on the dryer? Is it in the basket of darks on the couch? Maybe it's on top of my dresser? Ridiculous. 

If I'm honest with myself, I really don't like doing laundry. Not at all. So I delay it. As long as possible. I try to do as little as possible in the laundry department that still allows me to be a somewhat functioning human being. But the fact remains that it still needs to be done. So is it better to delay and do as little as possible and endure the frustration of having laundry in many places unfolded, or do I try to change my habit and deal with laundry daily in an attempt to get it cleaned, folded, and put away in order to avoid the added frustrations? 

This is a tougher decision than one would think. It's a conscious choice of enduring something either way. I either have to endure doing something I don't like to do in order to be satisfied at having done it after the fact or I have to endure the things that are frustrating about my current habits of delay and not worry about the fact that I'm rarely satisfied at all. 

For me, it's also question of motivation and available resources. I really am motivated to change my habits because as part of this year's quest, I want to develop a tidier home. A tidy home does not have laundry strewn about in three rooms, unfolded, and a short sleeve away from falling behind the dryer. A tidy home doesn't have visible laundry anywhere. And this vision of tidiness would give me satisfaction. But it comes at a cost, the cost of doing something I don't like every single day. Can the motivation change my view of this disliked task? Could it eventually be something that I don't dislike at all because of the satisfaction that completion brings? And then those available resources, like time. Does a system get thrown off if I'm gone three days in a week? Can I uphold a change in behavior if resources are scarce making it harder to accomplish? The question of available resources, especially time, are always on my mind. 

And let's not pretend that I only engage in this now-or-later battle over the laundry. This is actually so many things. It's the now of throwing away junk mail daily or the later of stacking it up and tossing it once a week. It's the now of putting away all of the work, lunch, daycare bags and containers as soon as we get into the house or the latter of tossing it all inside the back door and clean up the piles at the end of the week. It's the now of wiping up the spilled toddler dinner off the table and floor as soon as dinner is over or the later of getting to it after he goes to bed or the next morning when I step in the remnants. 

Getting this picture? The now is always something I don't like to do coupled with the satisfaction of having it done immediately, and the later is the satisfaction of not having to do it right away coupled with the frustration of leaving it undone. Add to this the pressure of feeling like it all needs to be done whether or not I have the available time or energy to do it, and you've got one conflicted flailing woman. 

But this Year of Intention was not meant to overwhelm or send me into a spiral of despair and strife. It was selected as such to create points of clarity and purpose, meaning and motivation. My habits to date are mostly just defaults in a busy world. It seems easier, albeit less pleasant, to delay doing things I don't like, but does that match the vision of the life I want? Well, that would require me to a have a pretty clear vision of the life I want. So I'll be starting there. Stay tuned as I work to craft this vision.